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Living in an illusion

I’m off for a week, but I’ll leave you with a quotation from the movie Inception to ponder:

It wasn’t so bad at first, being like gods. The problem was knowing it wasn’t real.

Annoyingly, by the time I’d found my notebook in the darkened cinema, then found a pen, then flipped to a clean page, all the while trying to concentrate on the film so I didn’t miss anything, I’d forgotten the next sentence!

The gist was, however, that in the world constructed by their dreams, the characters were like God; they could create anything simply by imagining it. They could change the laws of physics, rearrange the geography of the globe, bring back to life people they had lost…

Yet they knew it wasn’t reality, and after a while, that started to bother them. Sure, it’s fun creating stuff, imagining as much money as you want, eating anything you like and never gaining weight… but if it’s all going to vanish the moment you wake up, what’s the point?

It struck me that this is precisely the angst surrounding many of the most successful people of our time, particularly the film stars, pop stars, top models and the uber rich. They find they can do anything, go anywhere, have anything they want, but then the realisation begins to arise: it’s not real. Everything they think they want becomes hollow the moment they get it. It doesn’t satisfy.

It’s not so bad at first, being like gods, but when you realise it’s not real, what happens then…?